


i’ve been waiting for you (to come around and tell me the truth)

by dreamsoverdeath (dheiress)



Series: crowded town or silent bed (pick a place to rest your head) [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous timelines, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky has issues with time, Bucky is Stress Baking, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Captain America Sam Wilson, Established Relationship, Exasperated Natasha is Exasperated, Frenemies Bucky Barnes & Sam Wilson, Humor, Light Angst, M/M, Miscommunication, Misleading Titles, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Redwing is a baby that doesn't like fighting okay, Sam is a good boy, Slice of Life, Sort Of, Unreliable Narrator, Unresolved Issues, Written Pre-Endgame Release
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 14:05:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18573016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dheiress/pseuds/dreamsoverdeath
Summary: “What’s so important that you’ve gotta disturb Captain America mid-breakfast?” Bucky asks as casually as he can.“I didn’t even manage to start breakfast,” Sam rattles out, “because someone here thought it was a good idea to eat MY box of Cheerios.”(When Steve gave up The Shield, gave up because those are the only words Bucky will use, Sam didn’t want to pick it up.)





	i’ve been waiting for you (to come around and tell me the truth)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Hold my girl" by George Ezra.

 

“The most important thing,” Mrs. Rogers is saying, “is to proof your yeast just right, not too long or your bread will taste like yeast all over but not too short either or you won’t know if your yeast is still alive and your resulting bread might as well as be a brick.”

 

Bucky nods, leaning into the bowl where she has the thing all frothing and the like. If he strains enough, Bucky thinks he can hear the yeast breathing gratefully in the water.

 

“Steve,” he calls at the small figure doodling away at the window, “Come look, the yeast is alive!”

 

Mrs. Rogers shakes her head with a smile as they both stare at Steve who is lost again in his own world, “He’s been drawing all morning.”

 

She looks back at Bucky, “Sometimes I think that boy will forget to breathe when he’s in his own world like that.”

 

Bucky shrugs, smiles at her, “I’ll make sure he eats later, don’t worry, Mrs. Rogers.”

 

She ruffles his hair, fingers frail but warm, “I’m very glad he has you—

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Bucky wakes in gentle flutters.

 

When the last one manages to kiss his eyes open, he comes to a silent, empty bed.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER, YOU SONUVABITCH!”

 

Bucky ducks to the left to avoid the frying pan the motherfucker has the balls to throw at him.

 

“YOU’RE A WEIRD ASS MOTHERFUCKER, WILSON! I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING TO YOUR CARDBOARD TASTING CEREAL!” He screams back as he shoots the casserole pot’s lid back to Sam Motherfucking Wilson.

 

“HOW WOULD YOU KNOW IT TASTES LIKE CARDBOARD IF YOU DIDN’T EAT IT?!”

 

Bucky grunts as a flying spatula hits him right on his nose. He grabs the flat wood they use as a chopping board and uses it to block Motherfucker Wilson’s wooden spoon attack.

 

“I WOULDN’T EVEN THINK OF EATING THAT GARBAGE IF IT’S THE ONLY THING LEFT IN THIS WORLD THAT CAN BE CHEWED!”

 

The motherfucker’s red bird spills the open carton of milk with an anxious flurry of flaps and like a pair of fucking amateurs, they both stumble and slip in the mess, Bucky taking down the whole barrage of cooking instruments nobody knows how to use yet Wilson stubbornly displayed on the kitchen island when he blindly grasps the cloth thing beneath.

 

“Fuck,” Bucky grunts, his right shoulder solidly hitting Sam’s knee.

 

“Fuck you,” the motherfucker groans beneath him.

 

“Shit, no thanks,” Bucky gasps as the bastard knees him in the chest, “I’m not desperate enough for that.”

 

Wilson hisses and hits him on the head, “get off me, you big lump of meat.”

 

Bucky grins and pushes his upper body’s weight down on the fucker’s stomach. Wilson gasps as intended and Bucky misses the sharp hook aimed towards his face by flinging his self up from the floor.

 

Sam crawls up and, like the animal that he is, swipes off the milk on his hands using Bucky’s shirt.

 

Bucky bats his hands away and—

 

“Aw, man,” Bucky grimaces when he sees the carnage in the kitchen. There is milk and other liquids in places where there should not be milk and other liquids. All items that can be upturned are upturned, and there is a long, deep scar in the sink tiles that can be attributed to either Bucky’s metal fingers or Sam’s bird…thing.

 

“Shit,” the motherfucker agrees with him for the first time in the week.

 

“Do I even want to know what happened here?”

 

They both whirl around at the new voice and Bucky feels again like a third grader caught by Mrs. Dimple sneaking tadpoles into Frank Wallaby’s shirt.

 

“Hi…Nat,” Sam greets faintly, one hand rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.

 

Oh, the poor whipped thing.

 

She is wearing running shoes, worn jeans and a casual hoodie but Bucky’s eyes can trace the gun in her boot and the knives in her sleeves. A coil of stainless titanium fibre acts as a minimalist bracelet on her wrist and a chip of nanotrackers is glimmering from her dolphin shaped pendant.

 

Just a normal working day, then.

 

She toes a steel contraption that Steve thinks is used for peeling potatoes but Bucky thinks can be a torture device straight from Zola’s lab and did you hear that, motherfucker, Bucky just made a joke about Zola, he doesn’t need any of your prescribed 'therapy' to move on with his life. He is 'coping' or shit like that, now. Motherfucker.

 

Motherfucker, of course, is not listening to Bucky’s internal monologue because he’s too busy making heart eyes at Natasha.

 

Poor whipped thing.

 

“You’re going to ruin your hair, dyeing it that much within a week,” Bucky says because he can spare Wilson some pity if need be and help him from his newly found awkwardness.

 

She gets close, deftly walking around the mess of milk and probably, hopefully, black coffee on the floor. Her hair, black as raven now whereas it has just been a vibrant brown two days ago, flutters carelessly near her blacker hood. A piece of mushed banana— where did that even come from? Bucky hates those things, they can’t even manage to taste _just this_ close to the ones they had in the 30’s— is extracted from his fringes.

 

She flicks it away, clucks at him like a mother hen, “Well, James, not everyone can afford your hair conditioning regime.”

 

Her eyes stray towards the closed bedroom door and Bucky shakes his head. It feels weird, in a good way, to have people other than him care for the punk.

 

“He slept at the roof.” Sam whispers, though he doesn’t have to because Steve’s hearing is back to—well, before everything.

 

Natasha sighs, “You three are all a menace to this neighborhood.”

 

“Give him time,” Bucky says, Steve’s been like that when his mother died. Though, he supposes this time it is a different kind of mourning.

 

“He eats, at least?” she continues.

 

“Yeah, little bites here and there. I had to threaten to chew his food myself and spit it into his mouth once. Like a mama bird.” Bucky shrugs.

 

“That was disgusting and a mental image I didn’t need, thank you very much, Barnes.” Wilson says with a shudder.

 

“I did it once in 1934 and I can do it again.” Bucky says as he reaches for the mop and starts to clean the mess the motherfucker Wilson started.

 

Natasha shakes her head at them, though there is a hint of a smile at the edges of her lips. Bucky’s having more ease reading her these days. There’s something lighter in all of them, he thinks. Well, except Steve the fucking punk because that is another story entirely.

 

“Look at you both, bickering like an old married couple,” she teases as she helps Bucky right the fallen items on the island counter.

 

Sam, chugging whatever milk in the carton that isn’t spilt, disagrees, “I ain’t gonna marry that fucker even if you give me all the money in the world.”

 

Bucky pouts excessively and flutters his eyelids at the motherfucker, “But I thought you love me, sweetheart. I even shaved my beard for you.”

 

Sam looks so comically disturbed.

 

Natasha snorts.

 

“Well, as much as I hate to break up your morning domestic,” here she rounds up to Sam and pokes him in the chest, “I need you.”

 

He looks away from them and starts to mop the floor earnestly.

 

“What’s so important that you’ve gotta disturb Captain America mid-breakfast?” Bucky asks as casually as he can.

 

“I didn’t even manage to start breakfast,” Sam rattles out, “because _someone_ here thought it was a good idea to eat _MY_ box of Cheerios.”

 

Natasha hums, Bucky can’t see her face but he imagines her eyebrows going up, before she finally doles out her words in measured scoops, in complete disregard of what Sam has just whined about, “What I need today is a pair of eyes soaring above, shield optional.”

 

Bucky can almost hear Sam perking up and shakes his head at how similar the Punk and the Motherfucker are to each other. Figures. He thinks they both love getting punched and kicked.

 

“I can also use a long-range shooter as Clint has pledged all his remaining years to hula hooping with his kids,” the Black Widow says at Bucky’s direction, “if anyone would like to volunteer?”

 

He straightens up and smiles (—pull up the edges of your lips, feel them dig against your cheeks—) at her, “hard pass, thanks.”

 

She smiles, a different kind of smile and Bucky doesn’t tell anyone of this but sometimes, sometimes he remembers a different Black Widow (—long red tresses, an innocent face they’ve told him to train and train and train. Soft, warm flesh beneath his hard cold metal. A moan. A smile. The Soldier feels. He feels and they mustn’t know, _they mustn’t know_ —). Natasha must have caught something on his face because she looks away quickly and starts to frog march Wilson out of the kitchen.

 

“At least bring him back before dinner,” Bucky drawls once he manages to wrestle the memories back into a reinforced box he dubs 'dangerous things that can upset the status quo they are tentatively achieving'.

 

“I try to keep their bedtime at nine," he calls after them.

 

“Fuck you, Barnes,” Wilson deadpans, flipping him the bird.

 

“You three have the strangest relationships.” Bucky hears Natasha sigh.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Once Bucky manages to wrangle the mess in the kitchen into… well, a more organized mess, he releases the box of Cheerios from the cupboard beneath the sink and dumps the cursed rings in the bin.

 

“That Sam’s breakfast?”

 

Steve asks behind him, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Bucky half turns and smiles. His hair is mussed, t-shirt clinging awkwardly around his bony frame.

 

(When they returned to this Steve, Sam had a hard time not calling him ‘kid’ and it irked Steve to no end, Bucky had seen. Wilson confessed once, at the beginning, that it felt as if his best friend’s kid brother took over his best friend. Bucky didn’t say it then but _this_ Steve right here, frail but warm and ready to kick the world’s ass, was the normal one for him. If anything, the one made to be Captain America was the stranger to Bucky.)

 

“Hey punk,” he says, crumpling the empty box in his hands and tossing it into the bin after its contents, “got enough beauty sleep yet?”

 

Steve sits on the countertop, or tries to anyway, he can’t quite reach it with his height nowadays. He opts instead for a stool and drops his head in his arms. He groans.

 

“Natasha was looking for you,” Bucky starts. He pours warm water into one of larger bowls Natasha bought for them, testing it with his flesh fingers. It’s too hot, he’ll be killing the yeast if he uses it now so he sets it aside and grabs a pair of oranges.

 

Steve peeks from under his arms, “She was? Didn’t hear her, fell asleep to the tune of you and Sam screaming at each other for that box of Cheerios you just dumped in the trash.”

 

“Nobody in this house will be eating that box of cardboard rings while I’m here,” Bucky grunts, he slices and squeezes the oranges into two glasses and slides one of them towards Steve. Steve catches it, straightens his back and they both hear a loud popping of bones.

 

Bucky shakes his head, “The roof contributing to your nice sleeping schedule?”

 

Steve downs the whole glass of orange as if answering someone’s dare, “Didn’t mean to fall asleep there. Just wanted to watch the stars for a while.”

 

“We’re in the middle of Brooklyn, Stevie, even in the 30’s the night sky ain’t much sight. I don’t think it can improve that much what will all the industrialization…and shit.”

 

Bucky tries the water, it’s at the right temperature now. He adds a tablespoon of yeast and watch with an inexplicable sense of pride as the yeast dissolves and froths up the water’s surface.  Steve laughs softly at the island counter.

 

“You’re making everything from scratch?”

 

“Yeah, why?”

 

“You do know they sell freshly baked bread now, don’t you?”

 

“Of course, they sell everything now. Doesn’t mean I gotta buy them all.”

 

Steve snatches the other orange glass and nurses it like a beer. Bucky dumps some sugar, salt, the cooking oil Sam bought for health purposes and the flour that survived Sam and Bucky’s Breakfast Scuffle. He stirs everything as calmly as he could.

 

“Nat gave Sam another mission?” Steve tried to sound casual about it but Bucky knows it still stings for him. To be back like this.

 

Bucky stirs and dumps another cup of flour and stirs again until the dough forms. He takes out the spoon and starts to knead with his hands.

 

“Probably. Didn’t ask for details. Wasn’t interested.”

 

The smile on Steve’s face is almost painful. Bucky thinks he remembers Mrs. Rogers making that kind of smile on the days they both limp back to her from whatever brawl Steve started and Bucky finished.

 

(He remembers a lot of things these days.)

 

Steve tries to down the whole other orange glass as if answering someone’s dare. Tries, because halfway through, he chokes and chokes and chokes and Bucky stops kneading. He rushes to Steve, his blood suddenly beating war drums in his ears, “Steve, breathe with me, darling.”

 

“In,” Steve breathes, “In…inhaler. In the, in the drawer.”

 

Fuck, that’s right. Bucky can kill his self right now, Wilson placed those small tubes around the house like fucking Easter eggs. He jumps over the counter, opens the utensils drawer and grab the plastic tube that slides out. Rushing back to Steve, Bucky feels an urge to slam his head on the counter. It’s been years, it’s been fucking years and Bucky became fucking complacent.

 

Steve uses the inhaler as if he’s been using it all his life and Bucky can only swirl comforting circles on Steve’s back as he chokes on his own lungs. Steve breathes and he presses his face into Bucky’s chest. He must feel Bucky’s heart pounding, he couldn’t not have.

 

Steve’s smaller (back) now and it doesn’t help that Bucky has become larger (different) than he has been during the 1930s.

 

Fucking complacent, Bucky has become. They’ve come through a war, fucking experiments and time travel and it all made Bucky forget the most important battle they had and would ever face.

 

Steve breathes in and out. Bucky breathes with him. He swirls circles on Steve’s back and Steve whispers hoarsely against his chest, “I hate this the most, Buck. I fucking hate this shit the most.”

 

“I know, Stevie.”

 

He places a gentle kiss on the crown of Steve’s head, “I know.”

 

(The dough rises inside the bowl. It dries out and Bucky has to scrub it all out later)

 

 

* * *

 

 

They don’t talk about it.

 

They don’t talk about the war they joined in their twenties, the seventy years between their consciousness, the war in their nineties that could have been entirely avoided if Bucky had stayed dead or the Soldier out of commission.

 

They don’t talk about the aliens, _Thanos_ and the way he snapped his finger and Bucky turned to ash along with the fifty fucking percent of the entire universe.

 

Steve says he went to group therapy when they were gone. Motherfucker beams at him like a house lamp when he declares this but the way Bucky sees it, therapy just taught Steve how to hide where it hurts better.

 

They don’t talk about how to defeat the freaking purple alien Steve had to go back to the body Bucky was most familiar with, to the body Steve hated the most. They don’t talk about the years, apparently, spent in the soul stone and how when they woke up after the battle in Wakanda Steve was clutching both their hands, crying, snot and dirt and all.

 

Shrunken but never less.

 

Never less.

 

They talk about other things instead, about cereals that taste like cardboard or the way yeast rises or that Brooklyn Nine Nine show Sam had them both hooked on.

 

Bucky waits and waits and waits—

 

 

* * *

 

 

When Steve gave up The Shield, gave up because those are the only words Bucky will use, Sam didn’t want to pick it up. Wilson likes his Wings very much and thinks that having both Shield and Wings will be too heavy. It is, he couldn’t wear both so in the end he had to choose. (The World chose for him, of fucking course, they want the Shield more than the Wings is what they decided.)

 

Of course, Steve asked Bucky beforehand, a simple “Buck? Would you like it?”

 

Just a question, no expectations.

 

Bucky ruffles his hair, as if they were kids again and laughs, “Hard pass, you punk. Someone have to stay with you and make sure you don’t enlist in another chemistry experiment with your own body.”

 

Steve’s face cracks a smile, “The last one didn’t turn out so bad.”

 

“Well, that was because Dr. Erskine knew what he was doing. You might end up greener and angrier the next time, or worse—redder and uglier.”

 

Steve laughs, a brittle sound that Bucky remembers him making in 1929 when Susie Ann stands on her toes and plants her lips against Bucky’s—

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Bucky, you and I,” Mrs. Rogers is saying, “we both know how the world works. What we must do to survive in it.”

 

Bucky stays silent, clutching her hand, frail and getting colder by each second. Steve is outside, running for her medicine. He still has hope.

 

“But Steve. Steve is very much like his father. They both think the world will move in the direction they want if they push it hard enough.”

 

He chuckles, that’s Steve alright. Mrs. Rogers’ grip tightens for a moment and she soldiers on, “But I can’t have them any other way. I want them to live like that, always striving to make the world a better place. Always with hope.”

 

She coughs but manages a watery smile for him, “Will you be his shield, Bucky?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Bucky’s remembering a lot of things these days. It isn’t like the gentle wash of memories every night in Wakanda Shuri had designed for his mind, more like fractals of varying sizes dropping from out of the little things around him.

 

All the objects he had destroyed, the people he hadn’t saved (had killed), and the promises he hadn’t kept. All of them in a merciless torrential rain of memories.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The yeast froths so Bucky dumps the flour, sugar and salt into it.

 

(—white snow has gathered on the Mission’s face, the Asset drags the body—)

 

He adds oil and some more flour.

 

(—rancid piss on the floor, they cower from the Soldier, tiny faces pinched—)

 

He stirs.

 

(—the Soldier grips the Target’s neck and _twists—_ )

 

Then flour.

 

(—the blast showers him with dust and Bucky thinks _this is it_ —)

 

Stir.

 

(—the Asset opens his eyes and Bucky Barnes screams—)

 

Then flour.

 

(—a smiling face inside his scope, golden hair and blue eyes—)

 

Stir.

 

(—Bucky frowns and the Soldier thinks he needs recalibration—)

 

Flour.

 

(—his Mission falls from him, a stripe of blue and white and red steadily growing smaller and the Asset feels relieved, he—)

 

Flour.

 

(—white snow howling around his ears, Bucky reaches out to Steve but the railings crack and he—)

 

Flour—

 

(— _falls_ —)

 

* * *

 

“Nat wants you in an op,” is what Motherfucker greets him with one morning. The Shield is tucked haphazardly under the table, his feet propped on one of the other chairs while he eats cereal with a shit-eating grin. _Cheerios._ Bucky twitches at the sight.                                                                    

 

“Where did you get _that_?”

 

“Somewhere you’ll never know and, what’s more, I’ve hidden it somewhere you’ll never _find._ ”

 

 _The motherfucker._ He knows Bucky can’t rest until this house has been cleansed of those cursed _Cheerios._ Wilson laughs and Bucky almost tempers the urge to throw an apple at his face. Almost. The motherfucker catches the fruit with his fork mid-toss with another shit-eating grin. It’s scary how much like Steve he’s getting with each passing day.

 

“Natalia’s been training you,” Bucky observes as he plucks the apple from the fork before Wilson could get any bite out from it.

 

“Like I said,” the motherfucker drawls as he leans back his chair, “She wants you in an op.”

 

Bucky bites into the apple, it’s outrageous how much an apple costs these days and what’s more outrageous is how they have a basket full of it just as a display in the kitchen.

 

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he munches around the words.

 

“Your face doesn’t make any sense,” Sam sasses back. Bucky ignores him, because he’s the responsible adult in this relationship.

 

“What’s the mission?”

 

“Hydra.”

 

Bucky stops munching on his apple.

 

“I swear they’re like cockroaches, man.”

 

Bucky stares at his apple.

 

“Stop insulting cockroaches, Wilson.”

 

Wilson shrugs, “So, are you in?” and there’s a calculating gleam in his eyes that Natasha has certainly put there.

 

Bucky stares at his apple some more, he licks his lips.

 

“I, I don’t know, I mean, Steve would—”

 

“Steve would like not to have any babysitters hovering around him, for a change, actually.” Steve himself interrupts.

 

Sam flails, all of Natalia’s teaching going to waste as he tries to subtly kick the Shield out of view. Everyone in the room notice him try to do that.

 

“Steve, hey, hi, man!”

 

“Hi...Sam.”

 

Bucky groans. Ever since Nat started giving Sam regular missions, things have been awkward. And it’s entirely because Sam thinks of one thing—

 

 

(“Oh god, it’s like Bruce all over again—”

 

“What the hell are you talking about, Wilson?”

 

“Steve! Steve is like Bruce and I’m me and Natasha’s the Captain America title and this is so awkward, what do I say? This is one of the reasons why I didn’t want this freaking Shield—”)

 

 

And Steve thinks of another—

 

 

(“Oh god, Bucky, it’s because of how I look, isn’t?”

 

“…Huh?”

 

“Sam! Sam can’t think of me as the sickly kid from Brooklyn. He’s avoiding me, Bucky—)

 

 

And Bucky doesn’t like to push his nose into businesses like these. They’ll sort it out on their own eventually.

 

Sam stands up abruptly and Steve runs toward the toaster in an attempt of a valiant escape.

 

Hopefully.

 

The two of them stare at anything but each other and the ensuing silence is much too painful, Bucky wants to gore himself in the face with his half-eaten apple.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Steve stares up at the night sky, searching for stars that cannot be seen.

 

From this distance, he looks like a small kid and Bucky thinks _you stupid fucking punk._

 

 

* * *

 

 

“ _Fuck!_ ” The man controlling the wheel screams as the Soldier rips it out of his grasp. This one is collateral damage, so the Soldier does not bother with it. His mission is the Man and the Woman.

 

They managed to dislodge him from the top of the car but the Soldier, the Asset—

 

“—cky Barnes. Your name is Sergeant James Bucky Barnes,” the Collateral is chanting in front of the Soldier. He has both hands up and Bucky wakes with a start.

 

“What the fuck?”

 

The Collateral, no wait—

 

The Falcon, no that’s not quite it—

 

Sam Wilson—

 

 _Motherfucker_ stands in front, steadily still, both hands raised up.

 

“The fuck?” Bucky grunts.

 

“Do you know who you are?”

 

“Bucky—”

 

“Do you know where you are?”

 

“Living room, House, Brooklyn.”

 

“Do you know when you are?”

 

Bucky laughs bitterly, “Not the fucking 1930s.”

 

Sam lets up at that, and Bucky finally notices the Shield at his back, scant inches from where his hands are raised up.

 

“Do you know who I am?” Wilson asks, gentler than most times.

 

“ _Motherfucker,”_ Bucky gurgles.

 

The motherfucker throws a pillow at his face for that and Bucky laughs into it to blot out the building scream in his lungs.

 

There are worse ways it could have gone, he consoles himself.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The window opens and Bucky watches Steve clamber down the sill.

 

He looks genuinely surprised to see Bucky awake.

 

“Hey, you,” Steve says as he crawls into their bed. He smells like the night air and a little bit like burnt clay.

 

Bucky wraps him in a loose embrace, his left arm supporting Steve’s head, the other circling around his thin torso.

 

They used to do this when they were kids for heat and comfort and then when they were teens for a different kind of heat and comfort. They didn’t risk doing it in the army, neither of them knows how to do it safely with Steve’s new body and Bucky’s foray in Zola’s lab anyway. The years in between were lost in howling ice and now they’re back to doing it like children—for simple heat and the comfort of not being alone.

 

“Sam told me about what happened the other night,” Steve whispers against Bucky’s cheek.

 

“Oh, wow, so you’re on talking terms now,” Bucky snorts.

 

Steve coughs and burrows his head into Bucky’s chest to hide it, “Can’t believe he thought it was about being Captain America.”

 

“Bet he can’t believe you thought it was about how you look now,” Bucky murmurs back into Steve’s hair.

 

Steve snorts, “There was a lecture involved. Natasha hinted at a powerpoint presentation on why and how it couldn’t be because of it.”

 

(Atta girl. She didn’t need any prods to see the matter though Bucky did emphasize the sense of urgency in getting Steve and Sam on the same page of the same book.)

 

“But you’re changing the subject, Buck,” Steve says as he pinches one of Bucky’s nipples. Bucky grunts and swats the offending fingers away. “What happened?”

 

“Just a nightmare.”

 

“And the dreams with my mother, are those nightmares too?”

 

Bucky looks down sharply at Steve, who is already looking up at him with glimmering eyes. Most people forget that Steve is not just a soldier but also a tactician. In fact, he is a tactician first and foremost before becoming a soldier, and that’s what makes him very dangerous, not the superhuman skills. Steve became very good with tactics because he got very good with reading people. And he got very good at reading people because he had a lifetime worth of experience with watching people.

 

Bucky didn’t forget about that, he just thought that he knew Steve well enough to fool him.

 

“I thought you were sleeping on the roof,” Bucky asks uselessly.

 

“That only happened once. I come back here or to the couch to sleep after I’ve had my fill of Brooklyn stars.”

 

Bucky sighs.

 

“So, wanna tell me about those dreams? Or the ones that you have regarding Natasha?” Steve smiles, a serenely shit-eating one, “Really, Buck, it does something to one’s confidence when the person you love the most starts murmuring your best friend’s name in his sleep.”

 

Bucky raises his eyebrows, “Oh, so Natalia’s your best friend now, I think Sam would like to disagree.”

 

Steve punches him in the pecs, “You know what I mean, jerk.”

 

Bucky catches the lithe wrist, thumbing over the jutting bones. He kisses each knuckle twice and asks, “Shouldn’t we talk about this first? The fact that you had to give up being Captain America?”

 

Steve turns their hands over and kisses Bucky’s knuckles thrice each.

 

“Giving up the serum was my choice. I know that something like this could happen and I chose to do it still because it was the thing I must do. Because otherwise how could I look at you in the eye and say I did everything I could to avenge you?”

 

Bucky feels raw emotion scratching at his throat, “I never wanted you to avenge me, you fucking daft punk. I wanted you to move on and live with your life.”

 

Steve inhales, “Some people move on, but not me.

 

“I don’t regret giving up the serum. What I regret, if you want to call it that, is my inability now to protect you all and the fact that this body won’t probably last as long as you do.”

 

“The fuck are you on about?”

 

“Bucky, this body has always been my greatest enemy. I’ll probably die soon—”

 

“You idiot,” Bucky tries to say with all the exasperation he can muster though he ends up just sounding very fond, “What did you think of all those little blue pills Wilson and I make sure you drink? Candy? The future may not have Howard’s promised flying cars but the medicine here is insane.”

 

Steve snorts, shakes his head. He pinches Bucky’s other nipple, “You’re changing subjects. Again.”

 

Bucky breathes in.

 

He breathes out.

 

Steve breathes with him.

 

Bucky says nothing.

 

Steve sighs, “I can wait, Buck. Just remember you can tell me anything you’re going through.”

 

Bucky drops a kiss on his forehead.

 

“I know, Stevie.”

 

Bucky's not ready yet, but they got time now.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i've been staring at this thing for hours now without sleep and i'm not even entirely sure what it's about. there's probably a ton of mistakes in there but i have to get this out as soon as possible or it will eat me alive from the inside. kudos if you can help me with my tenses wah


End file.
